A Victim of Myopia

Wall Street is being shortsighted about Alcon's recent problems. Indeed, several trends are converging in the eye-care company's favor.

"AT FIRST, PATIENTS CAME TO ME when they were going blind," says Dr. Robert Cionni, who began his ophthalmology practice in 1989. Later on, "they came when they could no longer drive a car. Now the complaint is 'trouble seeing the golf ball,'" says Cionni, the medical director of the Cincinnati Eye Institute, one of the biggest eye-care centers in the U.S.

People have become less accepting of even a mild decline in vision, he adds. This lifestyle change represents an expansion in the number of...